Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Cloak and Dagger

All dressed for travel, Rana wears her new hooded cloak and basket harness, ready to carryKyra along with her. In front of her are some of the twig characters in the garden,a pas de deux couple dance at her feet, while Twigman reads a fallen answer leaf.

Mood
Fabrics comes through again with the most sumptuous luxurious fabrics
that I couldn't imagine looking for, and yet I find them there. After
auditioning several fabrics for a couple weeks, even going to another
great fabric store specifically for what I thought would be right
(wasn't), it was a trip to the great fabric mecca now on La Brea in LA
(with another in New York) that did Halfland good. Very good. Here's how:

What
you see above is my draping the Rana puppet with the fabrics I bought
at Mood for her cloak to see which to use and how. The left two show a
highly textured woven wool in red and a second choice of an incredible
plum wine woolen boiled (felted) cashmere that I bought a smaller amount of. They both
looked right as compared to the nearly all white cobweb look I had been
leaning towards did. The weight was better and the darker reds more in keeping with the character. She'll still wear cobwebs as she walks through them though.

It came together when I decided to use the plum fabric to embellish the red with a simple vine applique all around the bottom and to trim the opening of the hood. The rest was used to line the hood and as much of the cape interior as possible. This way, both colors got to be worn. Seeds, pods, acorn nuts, and beans were used for the flower centers.

A close up of the red fabric being sew; waxed linen was used to secure the trimming around the arm openings; Rana in her work clothes trying on the new rope harness (accidentally found at Mood--requiring no mods to use! $10!!) See how the basket looks on her back in this post; my 1960's vintage papier mache Mexican pin cushion (inherited from a grandmother I never met) cleaned and refurbished. I made her a new sand-filled top for my new glass head pins, to keep them razor sharp. She sits on top of the cloak fabrics before I started embellishing them; the rope harness was sanded to distress and then painted yellow ocher to match the palette everything got a good pressing after being completed. Of course all openings and edges of the garment were wired to hold position during filming.

Welcome to Halfland!

The most fun I could ever imagine is being made right in my house. Thank you for stopping by!

Rana

Wise Goat Woman, Rana, whose animal half is usually hidden beneath her layers of skirts. She lives in the perfect warmth of Summer during the day, taking cover overnight in her cozy half tree half cottage to endure the Winter cold darkness of night. She keeps Time and weaves as she observes the Seasons move in measures across Halfland.

Urhu

Serpent Sage Musician, Urhu, half serpent, half man, lives in the golden sands of the Secret Season where he plays sacred instruments that can encourage our best thoughts to grow and flower.

In The New York Times!

Very proud to say that Halfland was featured in writer Robert Ito's New York Times article on independent stop motion artists archived on their site: Stop. Snap. Move. Repeat for, Oh, 10 or 20 Years."In the studio town of Los Angeles, stop-motion animators are making small films of very personal visions at home for almost no money..." Go and Read it! Fun!

36 Minute Documentary!

36 minute, in depth documentary-style interview that John Ikuma filmed, edited, and produced about the project. Halfland featured in his web series, In the Shadows of Light: episode 2. A tour of the loft workshop and all that was going on in Halfland back in 2010.

Regular Visitors to 1/2L! (Heartfelt thanks to each!)

Subscribe To Notes from Halfland

Make a fun Sea Creature for Halfland's Underwater scene...

Extra Bonus Points for a Half/Word-Pun of some kind. Ask yourself what sort of creature would dwell in an ocean world of a land where everything is half of something else?!

Roll cursor over "notes" to read captions about each hand-crafted puppet that has already been made for the project by the fine readers of this blog! There's still time to make your own small fish and send it in! Thanks so much to everyone for the incredible fish they've already made for Halfland and for those working on making one now! These are the most wonderful marvelous things and will make the underwater scene a total RIOT! Can you imagine all the great critters doing their thing under the water?! I'm hoping to crowd the little ocean floor set with all your creativity!! So great.

Please email me at: nobledesign[at]sbcglobal[dot]net to get the address to send your wonderful creation. Be sure to include a note in the package with your name and link as you'd like it to read in the film credits. --THANK YOU so much!

Today's Cool Find

Can anyone guess why I LOVE THESE ADS from Solar City??? Hmmmm, I wonder....